Take Note

New view

It all began when 5th grader Kimberly Carpenter came home from
school one day and told her father she wanted to see the world from a
boy's perspective.

Under a 50-year-old tradition at her
270-student K-8 school in San Pasqual Valley, Calif., girls always sit
on the right side of the bus, boys on the left. But Kimberly said she
had sat in all of the seats, looked out all of the windows, and wanted
a change of scenery. Her father, Harold Carpenter, then decided to
question the policy, taking the matter to the school board.The school's
superintendent and principal, Gordon Christensen, said the challenge to
the policy took him by surprise.

"This is a long-standing practice and one that doesn't seem to
bother anyone except maybe Mr. Carpenter," Mr. Christensen said in an
interview. "Most parents feel the issue of safety is more important
than choice."

Keeping the sexes separate but equal makes the daily bus ride safer
because boys and girls are less rambunctious when they're kept apart,
the superintendent argued. And, he added, Kimberly sees one side of the
scenery on her morning ride, and a wholly different view in the
afternoon.

But the policy is not set in stone, and school officials are
considering integrating the sexes on a trial basis.

"This is not something we're going to go to the mat for," Mr.
Christensen said.

Old world

The quest to find the oldest world wall map in a U.S. school has
come to an end. Rand McNally has found a winner in Johnston Elementary
School in Appleton, Wis.

Last fall, the Skokie, Ill., maker of maps and other
geographic-information products sponsored the contest to help
strengthen the teaching of geography. ("Take Note," Oct. 9, 1996.)

Johnston Elementary had in its possession a British-made map, dated
between 1886 and 1893. The map identified Hawaii as the Sandwich
Islands and South Africa as Cape Colony, and it recognized Formosa,
which was given to Japan in 1895, as a Chinese territory, all of which
helped Rand McNally pinpoint its approximate age.

The company will give the Appleton school district $10,000 worth of
maps, globes, and atlases.